Water for Fracking in the Permian Basin, 2010–2019: How Much, and How It Grew

Water and energy features of conventional and continuous oil and gas development in the Midland Basin of the Permian Basin. U.S. Geological Survey.

Water and fracking

Oil and gas are taken from continuous oil and gas (COG) reservoirs by drilling directionally and hydraulically fracturing the rock around the borehole: water and sand, or synthetic proppant, are pumped in under pressure to crack the rock open, and the proppant holds the cracks open so fluids — usually water and oil — can flow out.

That takes large volumes of water, but totals are hard to pin down, since geology, drilling depth and fracturing needs differ from well to well. USGS counts three kinds of water use:

• Direct — drilling, cementing, fracturing and maintaining the well.
• Indirect — at or near the well: crew camps, well-pad upkeep, dust control on roads.
• Ancillary — everything else over the life of development, such as domestic and public supply, including recreation.

The Permian Basin

The Permian and Williston Basins. U.S. Geological Survey.

The Permian Basin, in west Texas and southeastern New Mexico, is one of the nation's largest conventional oil and gas reservoirs and is becoming one of the world's largest COG reservoirs.

• Conventional deposits are discrete and well defined, usually trapped under a caprock, and drilled vertically.
• Continuous deposits spread evenly through a formation, with much lower permeability (a rock's capacity to pass fluid), and need horizontal drilling — which usually takes substantially more water.

In 2015, USGS began a study to measure water used in COG development. It built a conceptual model and an analytical framework, with uncertainty, first applied to the Williston Basin of North Dakota and Montana (phase 1) and then, from 2019, to the Permian (phase 2). The data — water volumes, well records, climate and population — are in a public data release.

What was found

Direct water use rose every year:

• In both states it rose steadily, nearly tripling between 2016 and 2018.
• Indirect and ancillary use grew far more slowly, and direct use outweighed them more in Texas than in New Mexico.
• The gap between the states comes from the number of wells — about 4,000 in Texas and about 900 in New Mexico in 2019 — and the water per well.
• Water per well for fracturing was 29 times higher in 2019 than in 2010. Water for drilling and cementing was small beside it.

Direct, indirect and ancillary water use in the Permian Basin, 2010–2019: Texas (A) and New Mexico (B). U.S. Geological Survey.

Water use per well, with 95-percent confidence bands: fracturing and ancillary uses (A); indirect, drilling and cementing uses (B). U.S. Geological Survey.

Two basins compared

The rocks. In the Williston Basin, COG lies mainly in the Three Forks and Bakken Formations. In the Permian's Midland and Delaware Basins, it lies in the Spraberry (Midland) and Bone Spring (Delaware) Formations and, beneath them, the Wolfcamp shale. Both basins hold stacked shales, but the Permian's are thicker — as many as 10 stacked intervals in the Delaware and Midland Basins, split by the shallow Central Basin Platform — so it has more layers to fracture.

The rock layers of the Williston Basin. U.S. Geological Survey.

The rock layers of the Permian Basin. U.S. Geological Survey.

The water. Both basins saw fracturing water per well climb from 2010 to 2015 — from 1.4 to 4.7 million gallons in the Williston and from 0.6 to 5.4 million in the Permian. By 2017, the Permian used much more: 14.3 million gallons per well against 8.4 in the Williston. Likely reasons: longer laterals (the horizontal part of the well), operators' fracturing practices, the rocks themselves, and the supply and cost of local water. Indirect use per well, though, was lower in the Permian — perhaps from different data sources, or different needs for pads, dust control and camps.

Water use per well in the Williston (A) and Permian (B) Basins. U.S. Geological Survey.

Why it matters

Water is tight in the Permian: a semiarid climate, a growing population and limited groundwater and surface water. The model and framework can be adapted to other COG areas across the country, and as of 2021 USGS was working to put them into regular use.

Sources

Based on Estimates of Water Use Associated with Continuous Oil and Gas Development in the Permian Basin, Texas and New Mexico, 2010–19, U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2021–3053, by Natalie A. Houston, Grady P. Ball, Amy E. Galanter, Joshua F. Valder, Ryan R. McShane, Joanna N. Thamke and Jeremy S. McDowell, USGS Publications Warehouse, summarizing USGS Scientific Investigations Report 2021–5090; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Data came from the Texas Water Development Board, the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer, the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division and the Railroad Commission of Texas. Figures recovered from the fact sheet's PDF.